SACRAMENTO — For Abel Maldonado, the son of migrant farmworkers who rose from the strawberry fields to become land barons, Tuesday morning's tableau was another chapter in his own American dream.

Joined by his family — only blocks from his grandmother's home in hardscrabble East Los Angeles — the 42-year-old state senator predictably let his emotions bubble forth as he accepted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's nomination to serve as California's next lieutenant governor.

"If they think that there's limits on dreams, I'm here to tell them to look at me," said Maldonado, a Republican whose district includes Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties, the southeastern portion of Santa Clara County and the northern portion of Santa Barbara County.

The nomination — which requires confirmation by the Senate and Assembly — marks a pinnacle for a legislative career launched in the Assembly in 1998 and spent squarely in the state's ever-shrinking political middle.

And now, hailed by the governor as a "soul mate," Maldonado is poised to follow Schwarzenegger as a rare moderate Republican with statewide reach.

"It certainly creates opportunities for him that weren't available in the Legislature" said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. "There aren't a lot of Latino elected officials in the party, and there aren't a lot of moderate elected officials in the party."

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But amid all the warm rhetoric Tuesday, Democrats were ready with a splash of cold water.

Citing the potential $4 million cost of filling Maldonado's seat in the 15th District next year — with a special election followed by a likely runoff vote — Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said he had "grave doubts" about Maldonado's nomination.

Already one former Assemblyman, Democrat John Laird of Santa Cruz, has declared some interest in Maldonado's seat.

"My phone's been off the hook," said Laird, who left office last year after terming out. Laird acknowledged he'd have to move two miles to meet residency requirements.

But Steinberg suggested that the lieutenant governor's office — vacated when John Garamendi was elected to Congress this month — remain unfilled until next year's regular election. (Such a move also would leave Steinberg as acting governor whenever Schwarzenegger leaves the state.)

Matt David, the governor's communications director, countered that unless the Legislature takes the full 90 days allotted to act on the governor's nomination, a special election to succeed Maldonado could be consolidated with the regularly scheduled June primary.

The site chosen for Tuesday's announcement — Ruben Salazar Park in East Los Angeles — was particularly poignant for Maldonado.

As a child, he used to stay nearby with his grandmother and an aunt during the summers his parents toiled in the fields in Santa Maria. During the school year, he would work alongside his parents in the mornings.

Maldonado eventually went on to study crop science at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, emerging as a prominent city councilman and mayor before coming to Sacramento. Meanwhile, by banding together and scrimping, his family came to control hundreds of acres as part of a multimillion-dollar operation growing broccoli and cauliflower.

His aunt, parents, four children and wife, Laura, were among the relatives he brought along for Tuesday's remarks.

"We're back here again because I will never forget where I come from," he said.

Maldonado said he has not decided whether he would run for re-election as lieutenant governor after the remaining months on Garamendi's term expires.

Until his name emerged on the governor's shortlist for lieutenant governor, Maldonado was gearing up for his own Senate campaign next year and focusing especially on fundraising for his pet project: a measure for open primaries that is headed for the June ballot.

The measure, which would create a nonpartisan primary system for state offices, was placed on the ballot to reward Maldonado for voting with Democrats on controversial tax increases this winter.

That was one of a handful of major votes over the years in which Maldonado bucked the more-conservative GOP establishment to help Democrats — and Schwarzenegger — deliver on key compromises.

Some have said this week's appointment marks a quid pro quo for that support, a suggestion that makes Maldonado bristle.

"The governor never mentioned, 'I'm appointing you because of this vote,'" he said. "He has never asked me for a budget vote. I cast them because I thought they were the right things to do."

But Jon Fleischman, publisher of the conservative Web site flashreport.org, warned that Schwarzenegger's coattails may prove a hindrance for Maldonado given the governor's unpopularity among Republicans.

And playing to the middle won't help Maldonado in a statewide Republican primary, he said, where the electorate tilts heavily to the right.

"This may be the only way," Fleischman said of the temporary stint as lieutenant governor, "that Abel Maldonado will ever occupy a statewide office."